Emergence of an Intellectual Elite

In the wake of the movement to Indigenize education, Manitou College, the first post-secondary institution for Indigenous students in Québec, was established in 1973. Life at the college was intense and exhilarating for the First Nations, Inuit and Métis students. Sadly, it was short-lived. The college closed its doors after just three years, but it had a huge influence on its students. In his recent documentary entitled Red Power Awakening, filmmaker René Sioui-Labelle recalls how Manitou College fostered an entire generation of Indigenous leaders that includes Ghislain Picard, current chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec-Labrador. Anthropologist Pierre Trudel, who in 2009 published a series of interviews with Chief Picard, also stresses the key role played by Manitou College. Chief Picard fondly remembers the prevailing atmosphere at Canada’s first college for Indigenous students:

Being among 700 to 800 students of multiple Aboriginal identities at La Macaza’s Manitou College in the 1970s had an incredible impact on me. The students came from all across Canada, and even the United States. It was a huge awakening for me, not only in terms of the Aboriginal diversity represented, but also how much we had in common.

Trudel, 2009 : 20

Évelyne St-Onge (right), who hails from the north shore community of Mani-utenam, attended Manitou College. In 1974, she co-founded Quebec Native Women Inc. (QNW). In November 2015, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Université du Québec à Montréal for her outstanding contribution to development of the Innu Nation in particular and First Nations in general. She is pictured here with the Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould, then Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, who was visiting Sept-Îles.

Photo credit:  Évelyne St-Onge (2015)

Several public figures, including Lise Bastien, current director general of the First Nations Education Council (FNEC), Bernard Hervieux, director general up until 2014 of the Société de communication Atikamekw-Montagnais (SOCAM), to name but two, attended Manitou College. The College also had a deep impact on numerous founding members of Quebec Native Women (QNW) who were students there. Among them, Sylvia Watso and activist Monique Sioui (1951-1997), both from the Abenaki Nation, Évelyne St-Onge and Mérilda St-Onge, from the Innu Nation, and many other Indigenous women who remain deeply involved both within and outside their communities. As Pierre Trudel put it, several people who went on to form an Indigenous intellectual elite and now hold leadership positions met at Manitou College. (Ibid., 13)

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